Lover, Killer
by rookanga
Summary: When Gilbert's guilt causes him to leave everyone he has ever known, he has the good fortune of running into Elizaveta. But like all romance movies, the world has to tear the two apart before they can be together. Rated M for excessive use of the f-word and implied sex. PruHun one-shot


**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.**

**Warnings: plenty of cursing, sexual situations (though nothing explicit), thinly veiled hatred of Austria**

**meta-reference (type of meta-humor): (**_**noun**_**) a situation in a work of fiction whereby characters display an awareness that they are in such a work, such as a film, television show, or book. (**_**Wikipedia)**_

**In this case, meta-humor, although spoken about as if in a film, is not in the form of "breaking the fourth wall."**

His therapist tells him it isn't his fault.

"I _know_," he replies, surely sounding more exasperated than he feels. He has too much guilt. It tears at his insides, eating his vital organs with as much fervor as he drinks beer. It leaves no room for exasperation. "The courts have already told me that. I don't need you to as well."

Therapist looks somber, as she does (as therapists do when they can't "fix" their client). "I know what the courts say, Gilbert. But you don't seem to be able to move on from this."

"Oh, yeah? Well that's because I fucking _can't_!"

Instead of looking calm (as therapists do when they don't want their client to know that they think it's great, that it's healthy to get angry), Therapist puts on her sad face. Sad Face is a fucking lie, Gilbert thinks.

He saw Therapist before any of this even happened. He'd been going to Therapist's office every Wednesday since he turned eighteen. He'd once been able to talk to her, but now he can't, because he is different and even Therapist is different and this makes his behavior all the more "fixable". Fixable his ass. He doesn't speak, at least not about anything real. That's it.

Gilbert used to be able to talk to everyone. Maybe he wouldn't immediately spill every little emotion he felt, be it good or bad, and hide it behind an endless mask of drunken happiness, but he'd always felt he wasn't _too_ hard to read, all things considered.

Now he doesn't talk. To anyone. And when he does, his voice feels detached in a different way from before. It drones, probably mumbling a courteous, meaningless "Thank you," but it's all instinct, and what he hears is his new voice, his new being, talking in his head, teasing him, _I'm better than how you used to sound, you know? People like me better._

"People like it better," he whispers.

Therapist looks shocked. She expected him to keep shouting, he knows. But she recovers quickly (as therapists do when they need to seem like they know everything), and says, "What was that?"

"Nothing. Just that I'm awesome," he says, rising from his chair. "I believe our session is over. See you next week."

"Gilbert, sit."

Her voice is so commanding (as therapists' voices are when…he has nothing), that he sits back down immediately against his conscious will. He feels as if he's about to get scolded. Not knowing where to look, his gaze darts around the room before resting on his poor fingernails, mutilated by the constant maltreatment he's given them since it happened.

When Therapist speaks again, her voice is so much softer that he can pretend it's the same Therapist who he trusts. But then he hears her words and knows that he can't. "Gilbert, I think we should begin meeting more often."

"Why the fuck would we do that? So we can sit in silence for another hour a week?"

Therapist bites her lip in the same way that she did before, only everything's changed. "I'm thinking more like three sessions a week."

"Three? I can't afford that, and I don't want to do it."

"Just think about it, Gilbert. Please?"

He would have done before for Therapist, but he can't talk to anyone anymore and he's already spending more time and money than he would like with her and for her because his brother says it's good for him. Whatever the fuck that means.

"Yeah," he mutters.

Therapist moves right into action. "What days work for you? I–"

"I said, 'yeah' to thinking about it," Gilbert interrupts. "That doesn't mean this is happening."

Without waiting for Therapist to reply, he turns and walks out of the room.

The second Gilbert arrives at his brother's house he knows he can't stay. Stay here, and he's stuck among people who want him to feel better and talk and _talk_ the way he used to, but they don't even understand why he can't.

_"You didn't even know the guy, Gilbert."_

_ "The courts ruled you not guilty of any crime."_

_ "Just _tell_ someone what the matter is!"_

All the anger he didn't allow to come through at Therapist's office fills him up again, causing his cheeks to flush. "I killed someone!" he shouts to the room. "I killed someone! I didn't know him, and it wasn't my fault, but I _killed_ someone!"

He whirls around, hands on his head, his fingers running through his white hair and holding on with the force of the mentally unstable. Around his eyes the skin is damp, but he isn't crying.

A soft cry causes him to look up and release his hair.

"Feliciano?" he says.

"Please don't hurt me," Feliciano says anxiously.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says. "In fact, I'm leaving. Right now. Tell Ludwig when he gets back."

He races to his room, shoves a few sets of clothing and some money into his backpack and goes out to the entryway.

"I'm leaving now," he announces.

Feliciano holds out a Tupperware full of what looks like baked ziti.

"Remember to heat it up before you eat it because it's better warm. But don't put the container in the microwave because you'll get bad plastic stuff in your food. Okay?"

"Okay," he replies. "Thanks, Feli."

Feliciano doesn't move. "Are you sure you'll be okay?" he asks. "I don't think Luddy really want you to leave."

"Yes he does," he says reassuringly. "He just doesn't have the heart to tell me. And we can still meet up sometimes."

Feliciano still looks disconsolate, so Gilbert lays a hand on the Italian's shoulder. "Hey. Come on. This will give you more time with Ludwig alone, won't it?"

"But I don't want you to get hurt," Feliciano protests.

He sighs, slings his backpack over one shoulder, and steps out of the house, shutting the door behind him. Maybe it was rude, but he can't talk to anyone anymore.

It's seven in the evening, and a kind of dark that Gilbert never experienced living with his brother is all around him.

He parks his car on the side of a road, probably in the part of town where people get stabbed for no reason and so everyone carries a wary, hardened look in their eyes.

There's a grocery store down the street. He saw it when he was passing. He exits his car and walks into it.

Cashier, who sports a gravity-challenged lock of hair not unlike Gilbert's cousin's and a scowl to match Feliciano's brother's, says nothing as Gilbert enters and instead continues sipping at a bottle of beer Gilbert expects he stole from the refrigerator in the back of the store.

Cashier mutters the total when Gilbert plops the items he intends to buy: a six pack of beer, some Hostess apple strudel, and a pack of cigarettes on the counter.

After paying, Gilbert stands under a streetlight to smoke before he realizes what an awful idea that is. When he is standing in a circle of light that makes him look even sicklier than he does normally, the surrounding darkness appears somehow darker. That's why he doesn't see her before she speaks.

"Hey," a female voice says. It isn't a pretty voice but one rough around the edges; still, Gilbert feels that it could be pretty if it were kinder.

"Who's there?" he asks, and curses himself for sounding afraid.

A young woman, perhaps his age or maybe a little older, steps partway into the light so he can see her face. "Relax," she says. "I'm not going to kill you."

She is peculiar in that she looks and sounds educated. Cashier certainly didn't, and Gilbert is almost certain that no one with any sort of higher education would be here. Except for him.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Gilbert asks.

"I guess you don't," the woman says, and Gilbert feels as if they are in some sort of clichéd romantic comedy, and they two will exchange "witty" banter and then become friends until Gilbert realizes he loves her, ultimately ruining their friendship but after several awkward encounters usually involving a "hilarious" sidekick, the woman will find that she loves him as well and the movie will end with a time skip to their wedding.

Yeah. Okay.

"Look, can I bum a smoke?" the woman continues.

"No," Gilbert says.

"No?" The woman seems shocked.

"No," Gilbert repeats. "Absolutely not. Do you know how much a pack costs these days?"

""I'm sorry," the woman says, and she laughs a little, stepping completely under the streetlight. Gilbert can see she's clutching a frying pan in one hand. "I've never actually smoked before. I just wanted to be part of an edgy indie flick. In movies whenever someone asks if they can 'bum a smoke' the other person always gives them a cigarette. Don't kill me though, please. I brought a frying pan to defend myself, anyway, so you'll never get to me without feeling _pain_."

Gilbert finds himself saying the stupidest thing he can. "And edgy indie flick? I was thinking more like a romantic comedy."

The woman looks surprised, but rebuffs, "No way. If this were a romantic comedy we would be at a Starbucks equivalent before rushing off to our highly successful but largely unsatisfying jobs."

"Very true," Gilbert agrees. "But now we're in one of those stupid movies using meta-humor where the characters discuss how they happen to be in whatever genre of movie they happen to be in."

"So let's not do this," the woman says, smiling. "I'm Elizaveta. What's you're name?"

"Gilbert," he says.

"Well then, Gilbert," Elizaveta says. "Would you like to go to a nicer part of town and have a cup of coffee?"

"Sure," Gilbert says, and he thinks that this Elizaveta girl is great because she doesn't know what happened. Leaving was such a good idea.

It's been six months. Gilbert talks with his brother on the phone sometimes, but the guilt that Gilbert runs from, that he can escape when he's with Elizaveta or his co-workers and new friends, Antonio and Francis, comes back in a force that makes him feel so much worse than he did when he lived with it all the time because he no longer feels the guilt constantly throbbing in this stomach which would soften the blow of remembering what had happened.

Now, in tandem with a PG-13 movie, Elizaveta is lying mostly covered by blankets, one arm stretched over her head in a way that looks simultaneously lustful and graceful while Gilbert is wearing pants and socks and is struggling to put one of his shoes on.

"What's the matter?" Elizaveta asks. "Just take the shoelace out."

"No!" Gilbert replies. "The shoelace is fraying at the ends so I'll never be able to put it back."

"I know what I'm getting you for your birthday," Elizaveta mutters. She rolls onto her side and the motion causes the blanket to slip down slightly, uncovering part of her chest.

Gilbert glances back at Elizaveta for a second and finds himself unable to look away. Her brown curls frame her shoulders and collarbones perfectly.

Suddenly Elizaveta's languid smile turns into a look of shock and horror, her eyes fixed on a point behind Gilbert.

"What. The hell. Is going on?"

Gilbert turns and gasps. A man with delicate features, from his long fingers to his sharp violet eyes and even to the curl that protrudes from his hairline is standing in the doorway.

"Roderich!" Elizaveta cries, struggling clumsily out of bed and clutching the blanket to her chest chastely, a far cry from how elegant and immodest she was only seconds earlier.

Gilbert smirks. "Roddy," he says.

"Gilbert," Roderich replies coldly.

Elizaveta glances back and forth between the two men. "You two know each other?" She laughs, but it sounds despairing. "Well if this isn't a movie I don't know what is."

"I didn't know you lived here," Gilbert says.

"You would if you kept in touch," Roderich retorts. "Not that I would want you to. Your brother has been worried sick about you, you know."

Gilbert rolls his eyes. "Whatever."

Roderich eyes him. "I'll tell Ludwig not to worry. If you go around having sex with your cousin's wife, you don't deserve it."

"To be fair, I didn't know she was married, least of all to you."

"But you would if you kept in touch," Roderich responds airily. He crosses past Gilbert, the soft purple jacket he's wearing brushing Gilbert's hand, and heads for the piano that sits on the other end of the room.

"I thought you were going to be gone for another week," Elizaveta says.

"That doesn't excuse what you have done," Roderich says without looking at her. "I have nothing more to say to you right now. Leave me."

Elizaveta turns her gaze on Gilbert. Her eyes scream wildly, _Don't leave me. Please understand._

And Gilbert _does_ understand. He knows Roderich, and he knows how the pianist can make you feel like you don't matter. But he can't ignore the hurt he's feeling, so, wearing only one shoe and no shirt, he turns and leaves the apartment that he'd thought was Elizaveta's and that he now realizes she shares with her husband, his cousin.

Gilbert is stuck in a trance, showing no emotion as he leaves the building and gets into his car.

He focuses completely on the road, because if he thinks about the first thing that happened before he left his brother, and the second thing that happened just a few minutes ago, he will become an unawesome mess of high-pitched screaming and tears, and that would make him a sissy.

Two men walk onto the street, intending to cross. But in the middle, one stops, turns to face the other, and begins shouting. Gilbert slams his foot of the brake. The two men look away from each other at the sound and begin to run in panicked circles in the middle of the road.

Maybe it's that he's so distracted by what he's just found out, that if you want to be technical, he's been having sex with someone he's related to, but the similarities to the first thing that happened doesn't occur to him.

"What the fuck!" Gilbert shouts. "Why the fuck would anyone–gaah!" He rolls down the window and sticks his head out. "Get the fuck off the street, idiots!"

One of them begins shouting profanities at Gilbert.

"Fuck you!" Gilbert shouts back. "If you don't get off the street _right now_, I'm going to run you over!" That makes them move.

Gilbert presses the gas and drives on. It takes several minutes before he realizes that if he had run over and killed those men, it wouldn't have been his fault. It would be all theirs.

"It's not my fault," he whispers to himself.

He parks in his neighborhood, the same one that he'd driven into the first day in this city, and enters the grocery store. Cashier pays as much attention to Gilbert as he ever does, but now everything is shifted.

Gilbert rushes over to Cashier and says, "Hey there! What's your name?"

Cashier looks mildly horrified. "Alfred," he mutters.

"Alfred!" Gilbert cries. "That's such a stupid name!"

Alfred goes right to the defensive. "Is not! It's an awesome name!"

Gilbert laughs. "Kid, you have no idea what awesome is. This," he gestures to himself, "is awesome. My name is Gilbert, and _that_ is an awesome name."

"Please," Alfred says. "Gilbert? That's even worse than Alfred."

There is a moment of silence.

"Okay, neither name is that great," Gilbert admits.

"What's up with you?" Alfred asks. "Usually when you come here you just buy a can of Beck's and a pack of Marlboros. You never actually say much."

"I know," Gilbert says. "But you always look so miserable. I want to know what the problem is."

"Why?"

"Because I just realized that I am not to blame for something I thought I was. So tell me what the matter is."

"It's nothing," Alfred says. "It's just…my brother Mattie. He had his throat slashed last year outside our apartment. And, um, I saw it."

"That's rough, man," Gilbert says. "And it's sad. But look," Gilbert holds up a wad of cash he stole from Roderich's pocket as he passed back at his and Elizaveta's apartment, because Roderich is the kind of guy to have tons of money in his pocket, "I have some money here. I don't trust you not to spend it all on drugs or something equally harmful, so this is what I'm going to tell you: find yourself a therapist. Allow yourself to open up to them, because whatever they say is probably right. And I will pay. Okay?"

"I can't take your money," Alfred protests.

"Sure you can," Gilbert says. "What you don't want to do is find help for yourself. But trust me, you need it."

"Okay," Alfred says. "Thank you."

"Have the therapist send the bill here," Gilbert says, "and I'll come to pay it."

And with that, he gives Alfred a smile that hurts his cheeks, because he's been doing so little smiling, at least not in the way he used to, and exits the grocery store.

He runs into Elizaveta a couple weeks later at the farmer's market in a richer part of town than where he lives. Even though it's summer, and hot out, she's wearing long sleeves.

"What are you hiding?" he asks. "What did Roderich do to you?" Damn him, he can't stop caring for her, as more than someone to partake in intercourse with, a fuckbuddy, if you will. No, they had become friends, and Gilbert can't stand to see her hurt.

"Nothing," she says, a whine in her voice that tells him to leave the fuck alone. "Roderich is an exemplary husband."

She moves to pass him, but Gilbert grabs her arm, and pulls her toward him. "You deserve better," he says, his voice low and hard with the kind of hatred that is formed from not only hate of others, but also hate of oneself.

"You don't hate me?" she asks.

"No," Gilbert says. "If I had to be married to Roderich I would probably cheat on him too, especially with someone like me."

She allows a small smile to invade her features, completely changing her face.

"Just tell me," Gilbert says, his voice softer now, "were there any others?"

"No," says Elizaveta. "Just you."

Gilbert breathes out slowly. He couldn't have imagined how much hearing that would relieve him.

"You should get a divorce," he remarks, letting go of her arm and moving to walk away.

Elizaveta grabs for him and catches on to his shirt. "Wait!" she says. "Let's run away together."

The idea tempts him, and he leans down, moving to kiss her, but at the last second his lips only brush hers and he pulls away. "I'm sorry. No."

"You don't–I guess I was stupid to assume that you–I mean–"

She's tripping over her words, so Gilbert does her a favor and interrupts. "I do love you," he says. "But I have therapy sessions to pay for. I can't leave the city."

"Why? Just get a new therapist," she complains.

"It isn't for me," he answers. "But do yourself a favor and get out of Roderich's life. Someday I'll meet you, wherever you are." And as gently as he can, he removes her hands from his shirt and walks away from her, dissolving into the crowd. When he glances back, he can no longer see her.

It takes seven years before he receives a letter from Elizaveta.

_Gilbert,_ it reads,

_ I hope you still live at this address. Years ago, you told me that someday we could be together. Please, if that still stands, my new address is on the envelope. Come meet me there._

_Love,_

_Elizaveta_

Gilbert smiles. By now nearly everything has once again changed, but this change is because of time, not a tragedy. But one thing that has never changed is the way he feels for Elizaveta.

Over the years, he'd become discouraged, believing that as she once lied to him about her marriage, she was again lying about her feelings. But still, he'd stayed living in his crappy apartment in his bad neighborhood, even when Alfred got rich and hitched and he had no friends nearby.

The wait was worth it. It takes no time for Gilbert to pack his things, as he'd long since chosen what he'd bring to be with Elizaveta, so no more than an hour after receiving the letter, he's in his car, ready to drive to who he has wanted for seven and a half years.

What he brings is this: his toothbrush, toothpaste, his comb, a few changes of clothes, a few books, money, and Alfred's first film, one written, produced, and directed by Alfred himself, that tells the story of a young man and a young woman who love each other despite unfortunate circumstances, that was hailed by a critic as, "A brilliant concoction of comedy, tragedy, and parody. The more experienced moviegoer will find the meta-humor of meta-humor particularly pleasing."

_End._

**What Gilbert felt so guilty about was that some guy was being an idiot and through no fault of his own, Gilbert struck him with his car and killed him.**

** Reviews are always appreciated! If you have any question or just want to tell me what you think, feel free to drop a review or a PM if you want it to be private.**


End file.
